Teju Cole has been chosen as the recipient of the 2012 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for his debut novel, Open City. The novel is about a young Nigerian who is conducting his residency in psychiatry in New York. Cole will received the award in Boston on April 1. The award comes with a $10,000 prize as well as an appointment in the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series in the creative writing master of fine arts program at the University of Idaho.
Cole is Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He is a graduate of Kalamazoo College in Michigan and holds a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University.
DeWayne Wickham, Distinguished Professor of Journalism and interim chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. Wickham, a founder and past president of the organization, is a columnist for USA Today. He will receive the award at the organization’s Salute to Excellence Gala in New Orleans this June.
Professor Wickham is a graduate of the University of Maryland. He holds a master of public administration degree from the University of Baltimore.
Alex D.W. Acholonu, professor of biology at Alcorn State University in Mississippi, received an award for outstanding contributions to science from the Mississippi Academy of Sciences. Professor Acholonu is the first faculty member from Alcorn State to receive the honor.
Dr. Acholonu holds a Ph.D. from Colorado State University.
Sidney A. Ribeau, president of Howard University in Washington, D.C., received the Educator of the Year Award from the World Affairs Council. Ribeau was honored for his expanded focus on diaspora studies and increasing the university’s international footprint.
Dr. Ribeau has been president of Howard since 2008. Previously, he was president of Bowling Green State University in Ohio. A graduate of Wayne State University, he earned master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Illinois.
